Previous discussion at Wikipedia talk:Selective deletion

@JCW555: Re: your revert: Congratulations! You've just switched off criteria 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. I hope for your sake that you never have to review any contracts.  — Scott • talk 01:35, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You don't get to edit policy pages to try to get yourself out of a jam. Gonna quote RoySmith at the AN thread here "Editing WP:REVDEL to support his position was probably a troutable offense, but let's all just take a deep breath and move on to something productive." Also stopping with the hyperbole would be helpful. Other admins have done just fine with the previous wording. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 01:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't suspect you're correct about Scott's motives. Separate from the mind reading, do you really support the continued inclusion of "must be grossly offensive". It's plainly out of step with the rest of the policy, and it does not align with how revdel is used. If I revdel copyrighted material, or someone's phone number, or an IP address, am I violating this policy? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:04, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't support or oppose it, I just oppose his unilateral editing of policy to even give the appearance of trying to get himself out of the jam he's currently in by changing the policy to fit his stance. To quote Scott himself "The "misuse" section of the preamble, not the criteria themselves which define the use of revision deletion, said that for revision deletion to be used, the "material must be grossly offensive". As I have pointed out multiple times now, that invalidates every single criterion except RD2. Somehow nobody noticed that since 2009 the revision deletion policy has been contradicting itself." Maybe the reason why people haven't noticed since 2009 is that Scott's view of this is idiosyncratic, and judging on the thread on AN, it seemingly is. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 02:13, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Would you object to my restoring the change? I promise my reason is not to get Scott out of a jam. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:18, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Given that there's clearly some controversy about this, I think the best thing would be to propose a change here on the talk page and see if people object. RoySmith (talk) 02:20, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Will do. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The context here is that §Misuse has a line saying "Material must be grossly offensive, with little likelihood of significant dissent about its removal." Scott and I feel that this contradicts most of the rest of the policy, which enumerates multiple reasons for revdel beyond grossly offensive material. Scott has proposed changing that line to say "Material must strictly fall under one of the following criteria, with little likelihood of significant dissent about its removal." This retains the hyper-limiting spirit of the line while bringing it into alignment with the rest of the policy. I support the change. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:28, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The proposed change seems like a clear improvement; I support it. DanCherek (talk) 02:30, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That sentence specifically contextualize the previous sentence, but the paragraph break separates it in an undesirable way. Rather than removing that sentence, it would be better to combine the two as clarification regarding the point being made: Especially, RevisionDelete does not exist to remove "ordinary" offensive comments and incivility, or unwise choices of wording between users, nor to redact block log entries; such material must be grossly offensive, with little likelihood of significant dissent about its removal. Grandpallama (talk) 02:34, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I like that combination. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:41, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This proposal sounds good to me too. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:42, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

+1. The next section could nevertheless begin with "Material must strictly fall under one of the following criteria:". Levivich (talk) 18:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe replacing grossly offensive with grossly disruptive could still make the point while providing latitude for other criteria than RD2? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 02:37, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe both? grossly offensive or disruptive? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:41, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This would be an incremental improvement, but there are still RD criteria that apply to more than just disruptive content. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:42, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest deleting the "misuse" section in its entirety. Other sections indicate why this is a high-risk action, and the giant green box below duplicates guidance. introduced for administrators in 2010 can be moved somewhere else. Ca ^{talk to me!} 06:23, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Best option, and the only one so far to see the bigger picture as we've been focusing on minutiae. The section is very characteristic of much of the policy-adjacent material written circa 2008 - verbose, lecturing, and redundant. Everyone benefits from cleaner, tighter policy pages.  — Scott • talk 08:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the green box should be dismantled and merged with the "Misuse" section, which should be retained. —Alalch E. 10:01, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For sure. One, the other, or a hybrid, just not both.  — Scott • talk 10:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd recommend reading the talkpage archives, specifically the first, when this ability was being rolled out. The "grossly offensive" language wasn't casually chosen, and was discussed at length, so we shouldn't be too cavalier about removing it if it can just be better clarified or incorporated. Grandpallama (talk) 02:48, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Scott's edit per the comments made above. And I favor that over the copyedit proposed by Grandpallama that retains "must be grossly offensive", as the material does not in fact have to be grossly offensive to fall under some of the criteria under some of the circumstances. In addition, I propose changing "RD3. Purely disruptive material" to "RD3. Substantially disruptive material", as almost all vandalism is purely disruptive (vandalism is editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose—how can such edits be anything other than purely disruptive, except in some unusual instances or under extraordinary circumstances), but the intention is not to cover all or almost all vandalism, so that name for the concerned criterion isn't descriptive, which is evident from the following text that defines the criterion which really does not describe most vandalism: harassment, grossly inappropriate threats or attacks, browser-crashing or malicious HTML or CSS, shock pages, phishing pages, known virus-proliferating pages is rather bad vandalism, significantly worse than average vandalism, and unlike much of vandalism that is only notionally or mildly disruptive since it is easy to detect and undo—while still being exclusively disruptive and nothing but disruptive ergo "purely disruptive"—the listed forms of vandalism are substantially disruptive, and need more drastic mitigation.—Alalch E. 09:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Great analysis of why the current wording of RD3 is imprecise. That would be an excellent refinement.  — Scott • talk 10:48, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I think an intensifier would be good, but "substantially" can also mean "true down to the very substance/essence of the thing, not just superficially true". As you say, all vandalism is disruptive, and substantially so, by that meaning. Could we just use "grossly"? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:07, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Maybe "severely disruptive" would be better to have some variation because "Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material" uses "grossly" and is also "grossly disruptive"; actually, since R3 is effectively a bit of a catch-all relative to R2, and however we phrase it: "severly disruptive", "grossly disruptive", "substantially disruptive", its label would encompass R2, so I suggest "RD3. Other severely disruptive material". —Alalch E. 12:45, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Looks good to me. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:50, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Good catch. Although none of these intensifiers are quantifiable per se - how many vandals dancing on the head of a pin does it take to be "severely" disruptive? 😉 Still a definite improvement.  — Scott • talk 12:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Well, here is my screed: revision deletion fundamentally breaks the model of open collaboration on which Wikipedia is built, it makes us unauditable by the public and forcibly inserts administrators as an unaccountable class of kommissar intermediaries between people and the provenance of their knowledge resources. My firm opinion is that it should, generally speaking, not be done unless absolutely necessary, such as text or images that have been made literally illegal to view. Using it for peepee poopoo, or even shit piss fuck cunt, is like using nerve gas on rowdy schoolchildren: not worth it. jp×g🗯️ 07:55, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  JPxG, I don't think anyone is proposing that here. Did mean to comment at the AN thread? _WADroughtOfVowels^P 10:29, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Wheo! That's one spicy comparison JPxG is making and I can't endorse it. But it is worth me reposting and elaborating on something I said at the tail end of that thread because this is the right place for it.

  The whole difference of opinion over whether it's right to revdel "normal" vandalism is a subset of the ancient debate of inclusionism and deletionism. It's been forced to extremes, because when you boil down the issue what's left is that our software is simply not good enough. I think that vandalism should be hidden away (not "deleted" - the fact of the system being called "revision deletion" is just one of many issues with it) for two reasons: to deny recognition to vandals, and to minimize disruption to people reading page history. Revdel as it exists today is a crude and blunt tool with almost no nuance whatsoever. You have two options for a given unit of data (actor, revision text, edit summary) - leave it on public view, or punt it into the Phantom Zone where only admins can read it. There's no gradation that can be applied when hiding revisions.

  By contrast, consider a system where applying, for example, RD2 would make an item inaccessible to anyone without elevated privileges, but RD3 would hide it behind an additional interface element until a button is clicked. Minimal visibility for disruptive material without presenting any barrier to edit filter managers, recent changes patrollers, etc. This isn't a new idea at all: various social media apps have had it for a long time in the form of "hidden replies". It's a middle ground which raises no hard barriers but also keeps the house clean.

  Incidentally... we are already an unaccountable class of kommissar intermediaries between people and the provenance of their knowledge resources, because no effort has been made at the system level to have it otherwise. 99.9% of Wikipedia readers don't even know that talk pages exist, or that there are fora in which they can seek redress for perceived issues - let alone that there are page histories, logs of when admins renamed things, etc. The WMF, for all its posturing as an organization "making knowledge available to everyone", has made precisely zero effort on developing an accountable knowledge environment for the general public through accessible design. This project is still as much of a technocracy as it was twenty years ago.

  The problem is also being worsened by parasitic third parties extracting our content, such as the snippets on Google's search results which isolate people from knowledge provenance even further - not to mention the current "AI" trash craze. While those are out of our control, the WMF has had the opportunity to increase fairness in our own precincts for decades but chooses to ignore it and focus on technicalities instead. Accessibility improvements are obviously to be welcomed but we need acknowledgement of ethical matters as well, and commitment to do better.  — Scott • talk 11:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm hoping to move this discussion forward, and it would be helpful to know which of the proposals has the most support. I believe I've captured all the suggestions above, but please add to the list if I've missed one.

1. Maintain the status quo: "Material must be grossly offensive".
2. Remove the clause completely.
3. Change to ""Material must strictly fall under one of the following criteria".
4. Combine the sentence with the previous one: "Especially, RevisionDelete does not exist to remove "ordinary" offensive comments and incivility, or unwise choices of wording between users, nor to redact block log entries; such material must be grossly offensive, with little likelihood of significant dissent about its removal."
5. Delete §Misuse entirely.

It would help if participants here could indicate all the options they support. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:30, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I support 2, 3, 5, and 4 in the that order of preference. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:30, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Pinging discussion participants: @JCW555, RoySmith, DanCherek, Grandpallama, SarekOfVulcan, Chaotic Enby, Ca, Alalch E., and JPxG. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:49, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• 4, 3, 1 in that preference order. Thryduulf (talk) 18:53, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Support 4 & 3. _WADroughtOfVowels^P 19:01, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• 5. 2 as a distant second choice.  — Scott • talk 13:40, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• 4, 3, 2, 5, 1 in that order of preference. Levivich (talk) 14:17, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• 5, 2, 3, 4, 1 in that preference order. Ca ^{talk to me!} 13:01, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I would support 5, and be neutral on 3. Ca ^{talk to me!} 13:09, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Can I take it that you would then oppose 4, and oppose 1 even more? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:21, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes. Ca ^{talk to me!} 14:58, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• 4, 3, 2, 5, 1 in that order. Don't really oppose any of them. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:57, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• TBH, I haven't been following the whole discussion but since I was pinged... I've never really seen any problem with the current wording, but I haven't spent enough time to understand the implications of the 5 alternatives offered above, so I'll abstain. RoySmith (talk) 15:47, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• 4, 1, 3 in that order of preference. I do not believe 2 and 5 should be entertained, especially since this entire examination was prompted by someone not adhering to the community's expectations around use. That's an argument that reinforces the need for this language, not for its removal. Grandpallama (talk) 17:08, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• 4, 3, 1, 2, 5, in that order. I pretty much agree with Grandpallama's argument that the clause shouldn't be removed, although I see the clarifying done by option 3 as superior to the status quo simply by virtue of being more explicit. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:16, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like option 4, combing the "grossly offensive" sentence with the one prior to it, is popular. It's also the most minimal change proposed. It's not my favorite option, but I do think it's an improvement over the status quo. It's also a minor enough change that I think we could implement based on rough consensus here. I'd be interested to hear from Ca, who opposed this option, and Scott, who did not support it. Care to explain your objections? Would you stand in the way of implementation? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:32, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't stand in the way as I simply don't care that much. I set out my objection in my comment above at 08:53, 12 July.  — Scott • talk 10:32, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Option 4 implemented. I'd be happy to see further discussion about other options, I just don't have the time to push this forward. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:33, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, FFF! Levivich (talk) 19:09, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(note that I will be discussing RevDel here but this is also relevent to suppression)

I have noticed a potential backdoor that allows people to view RevDelled content. Although RevDel hides the revision in the page history, RevDellable content often trips one or more filters. The details of the filter log entries will still reveal the content and need RevDelling separately. To address the issue, should we add information reminding admins to look at the filter log and RevDel that too? QwertyForest (talk) 15:45, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking as a relative filter noob, how convenient is it to check the filter when revdelling, and how do we revdel filter log entries? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:06, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just email OS with logs that need tidying. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:45, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Filter entries cannot be revision deleted but they can be suppressed. If you see a filter entry that needs hiding then contact the oversight team with the details and we'll take care of it. phab:T44734 and phab:T115530 appear to be the relevant Phab tickets, but they've been open since 2012 and 2015 respectively. At least the first is apparently "difficult" although I don't understand why; the second was being worked on by one person (Daimona Eaytoy) but there is no indication of anything happening since 2018 other than them possibly abandoning that work in March this year? Thryduulf (talk) 16:42, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although having said that filter entries relating to revdelled revisions should be automatically hidden to non-admins, it's not easy for an admin to check whether this has happened correctly or not. Thryduulf (talk) 16:44, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen two cases where edits that were revdelled were visible in the filter log and one case where I had to ask Oversight to suppress a filter log with suppressable content, so I would say that it's not working. QwertyForest (talk) 17:05, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Only the logs associated with a revision that was deleted are hidden:

- Case: User tried to edit, triggers a warn filter, posts anyways - edit is then reverted and revdelled

- Result: Only the logs triggered in the 'posts anyways' action are hidden;

- Case: User tried to edit, triggered a disallow filter, quickly changed their edit and posted again - edit is then reverted and revdelled

- Result: Only the logs after they changed their edit are hidden;

That appears to be how it works. Unfortunate you can't revdel filter logs directly, didn't know that. – 2804:F1...9E:DCD8 (::/32) (talk) 19:13, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

can i get the article back? i have many more publications to link about trae. Crhodesdor (talk) 19:51, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Crhodesdor: No, as it was deleted as advertising, but you can ask the deleter user:Espresso Addict to reconsider their deletion. The correct page to ask for this kind of thing is WP:REFUND. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:15, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Crhodesdor: I've taken another look and stand by the deletion; the draft is pure promotion. The subject could conceivably meet GNG so there is no prejudice to starting another draft using reliable independent sources and avoiding promotional language. Regards, Espresso Addict (talk) 21:24, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The wording of this section was a bit impenetrable, due to some grammatical errors (most likely convoluted language by a well-intentioned but not-native-English-speaking writer, but maybe not). In the spirit of being bold, I've edited it [1]. I *think* I remember enough about RevDel's genesis to be reasonably confident I didn't misrepresent the intended interpretation. However, since wording of this policy more broadly has been a bit contentious, I'm highlighting it here for review by others. Feel free to revert or modify if I got the gist wrong or introduced some bias. Martinp (talk) 18:36, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]